Tablet Stirs Debate About Christ’s Messiahship

A recently examined stone tablet that scholars date before the life of Jesus Christ bears an inscription with an apparent reference to a slain Messiah rising after three days. The most controversial line of the 3-foot tablet, dubbed “Gabriel’s Revelation,” has already been declared indecipherable in a paper by two Israeli scholars. But that hasn’t discouraged Israel Knohl, a Hebrew University professor, from offering his interpretation of line 80: “In three days you shall live, I, Gabriel, command you.”

The significance of this discovery, we are told, is that the story of a messianic sacrifice and resurrection was not unique to the world of Christianity. It may have actually predated Christ as an established Jewish tradition. “It proves that the concept of the Messiah was already there before Jesus,” Knohl said at a conference in Jerusalem on Sunday.

Hang on a second—doesn’t the Old Testament prove that?

Professor Knohl told the New York Times last Sunday that “such a suffering messiah is very different from the traditional Jewish image of the Messiah as a triumphal, powerful descendant of King David.” He’s right about the Jewish perception of the prophesied Messiah. But what does the Jewish Bible—the Old Testament—have to say about the matter?

The Jewish Encyclopedia says there is “no evidence of any Jewish conception of a Messiah suffering through and for his people” (article “Jesus of Nazareth”). No evidence? Or is the biblical evidence simply ignored when it doesn’t square with people’s perception of what a Messiah ought to be like? The encyclopedia says the Jews view the Messiah as their ideal king—the “coming of a second David” (article “Messiah”).

Yes—that’s what men say about their Messiah! But what does the Bible say?

The Duality of Prophecy

In the very first pages of the Bible, God prophesied that He would allow Satan to bruise the heel of a coming Messiah. But that same Messiah would in turn bruise Satan’s head by overcoming and conquering him, before replacing him on the throne of this Earth.

How revealing this prophecy in Genesis is! But like more than 300 other prophecies about the Messiah, one cannot properly understand their meaning without first knowing that the Messiah was prophesied to make two appearances on this Earth.

A prophecy in Daniel 9 explains. “Seventy weeks are determined … to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy” (verse 24). The whole prophecy includes making reconciliation for iniquity and bringing in everlasting righteousness, but not all during one messianic appearance. Notice:

“Know therefore and understand that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks …” (verse 25). Here, in plain language, we are told that there would be 69 prophetic weeks (or 483 years, with each day counting as one prophetic year) from the decree of Artaxerxes to rebuild the temple until the Messiah’s first appearance.

As for the remaining week of this prophecy, the prophet writes, “And he [the Messiah] shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease …” (verse 27). The last week, the focal point of this prophecy, is clearly divided into two separate parts.

His first appearance would be marked by a virgin birth in Bethlehem, a lowly existence of being despised and rejected of men, betrayed by a friend, and purchased for 30 pieces of silver—all of these details discussed, centuries in advance, by prophets of the Old Testament.

Christ’s Suffering Prophesied

Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53 describe the agonizingly bloody and disfiguring crucifixion of the Messiah. “I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint,” it says in Psalm 22. Isaiah adds, “[H]e was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities …. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”

Shouldn’t prophecies this specific—fulfilled by the ignominious death of Jesus Christ—carry much more weight than markings on an illegible stone tablet?

Notice how the Jewish Encyclopedia attempts to turn Isaiah 53 on its head to supposedly disprove that Jesus was the Messiah: “Whatever had been Jesus’ anticipations, he bore the terrible tortures, due to the strain and cramping of the internal organs ….” So they readily admit that Jesus was mercilessly beaten and then murdered. But, according to Jewish scholars, “The very form of his punishment would disprove those claims in Jewish eyes. No Messiah that Jews could recognize could suffer such a death; for ‘He that is hanged is accursed of God …’ (Deuteronomy 21:23).”

Never mind that when Jesus Christ died, He paid the death penalty for mankind, being made a curse for us, as Paul wrote to the Galatians.

Never mind that scriptural evidence abounds of a Messiah suffering for His people. Abraham’s sacrifice of his own son—and Isaac’s willingness to submit to that—was powerfully symbolic of a God who would later offer His only begotten Son as a sacrifice for the sins of the world. Jews today see Abraham as their father without realizing that he was actually a type of God the Father.

The Passover observance in ancient Israel, repeated every year, was another bloody reminder of a future sacrifice that would be offered once and for all. That lamb sacrifice, which redeemed Israel from Egypt, was only a forerunner of an awesome, all-encompassing sacrifice that would ultimately redeem all of mankind from a world of sin!

Added to that, there were the many other ritualistic offerings and sacrifices in Israel that constantly reinforced this concept: without blood, there can be no remission of sin.

Why Pharisaical Opposition

This may come as a surprise to some, but the Jewish leaders of Christ’s day knew that Jesus was the prophesied Messiah. After His birth in Bethlehem, the wise men who came looking for Him in Jerusalem asked, “Where is He that is born King of the Jews?”

When King Herod received word of this, he immediately assembled the chief priests and scribes—the leading Jews of Jerusalem, in other words. These Jewish scholars referred him to the prophecy in Micah—that out of Bethlehem would come a “Governor” that would rule the people of Israel. Well aware of the prophecies that described a Messiah’s coming rule, they were looking for their ideal king.

Among Jewish commoners, Jesus Christ initially enjoyed widespread support as the prophesied Messiah. After the breathtaking miracle of the loaves and the fishes, recorded in John 6, the thousands who witnessed the event knew Christ was the prophesied Messiah. Had it not been for Christ’s inconspicuous departure, Scripture says, the exuberant crowd would have taken Him by force in order to crown Him King.

This was cause for alarm among the Jewish hierarchy. The Roman Empire occupied the region at the time. But Rome allowed the Jewish state a restricted amount of autonomy. And for those Jews who were in positions of leadership, Jesus Christ—the prophesied King of the Jews—posed a serious threat.

After Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, the Scriptures inform us, the chief priests wanted to kill him again because of the impact his resurrection had on the masses. Jews were turning to Jesus Christ in droves!

“Then gathered the chief priests and the Pharisees a council, and said, What do we? for this man doeth many miracles. If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him: and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation” (John 11:47-48).

The Jewish council feared the Romans would accuse them of disloyalty and remove them from their positions of responsibility and possibly execute them. They also feared losing their own Jewish congregants, which made them insanely jealous of Christ’s ministry.

This is why the Pharisees strongly opposed and denounced Jesus Christ. Because they only understood one messianic appearance, they unwittingly had a direct hand in triggering a chain of events that resulted in the prophesied suffering and death of their Messiah.

‘I Will Come Again’

While the Jewish concept of the prophesied Messiah is that of a warrior-like King who establishes Israel’s world-rule over all the Earth, traditional Christians are not at all interested in submitting to the authoritative rule of an all-powerful King. Christians instead embrace the idea of a conscience-clearing scapegoat who (they think) came to this Earth as a smart-alec Son who abolished His Father’s law and inserted a kind of “grace” that allows for disobedience.

So while traditional Christians may look down their noses at Jews for not accepting Jesus as their Savior, they themselves reject Christ as Ruler and Judge. Thus, they totally misunderstand dozens of prophecies regarding the Messiah’s Second Coming.

Even though affirmed repeatedly in the Bible—in both Old and New Testaments—an overwhelming majority of Christians today do not believe in the Second Coming of Christ—at least not in the sense of His literal world-rule on this Earth.

“If I go and prepare a place for you,” Jesus told His disciples, “I will come again” (John 14:3). And He’s coming back, the Bible says, with great power and fury. “Then shall the Lord go forth, and fight against those nations …. And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives …” (Zechariah 14:3-4).

Yes, the same Bible that prophesies of Christ’s “lowly” appearance in the city of Bethlehem also says that He would make another, much more dramatic appearance—one like a “refiner’s fire”—on the Mount of Olives.

Yet, even in these last days of living in a world that is about to explode in violence, man is still inclined to shape a Messiah figure into their ideal form, or join a church that conforms to their standard of beliefs, or get excited (or angry, depending on their beliefs) about what 87 lines of text on an ancient stone might mean.

Why not just take God at His word?

The days are coming, the Prophet Jeremiah told us, when the Messiah will reign over all the Earth, executing judgment and justice. The Prophet Isaiah, who wrote about the Messiah’s lowly virgin birth, also said that child would one day rule rule the Earth from the throne of David and that His government would never end!

No matter what men say, that day is coming soon!